Health system, facing own lawsuit, sues Bumbolo

Tuesday

Mar 21, 2017 at 5:15 AM

In the secure psychiatric facility where he’s been held since February 2016, Paul Bumbolo is expected to receive a delivery: a third-party complaint in an ongoing wrongful death suit that alleges negligence by more than a dozen defendants in the deaths of his relatives.

Micaela Parker @OD_Parker

In the secure psychiatric facility where he’s been held since February 2016, Paul Bumbolo is expected to receive a delivery: a third-party complaint in an ongoing wrongful death suit that alleges negligence by more than a dozen defendants in the deaths of his relatives.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 2015, Bumbolo killed three of his family members at the 1908 Whitesboro St. home in Utica where they all lived, approximately 11 hours after he was released from a local hospital where he'd been taken for a mental health evaluation.

A wrongful death civil suit was filed in early 2016 on behalf of the estates of the victims, who allege that more than 20 defendants — including the Mohawk Valley Health System, Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare and the Utica Police Department — acted negligently in their handling of Bumbolo.

Now, in a March 7 third-party complaint, the health system and its associated defendants have in turn filed a complaint and demand for a jury trial against Bumbolo. The complaint alleges Bumbolo was responsible for any "damages" sustained by the family of the victims.

“Such damages were sustained in whole by reason of the active carelessness, recklessness, negligence, negligent actions or omissions, intentional assault, murder, depraved indifference and violence committed by the third-party defendant Paul Bumbolo without any negligence on the part of the defendants and third-party plaintiffs Faxton-St. Luke’s healthcare and/or its employees,” the complaint states.

If the family of Bumbolo’s victims were to receive a ruling against Faxton St. Luke’s and its named employees, the complaint continues, then Bumbolo should be liable to compensate the defendants.

The attorney for the health system and its associated defendants, Christine M. Napierski of the Albany-based firm Napierski, Vandenburgh, Napierski & O’Connor, did not return an emailed request for comment.

District Court Judge Therese Wiley Dancks signed the order permitting the delivery of the third-party summons and complaint against Bumbolo on March 9. It could not be learned whether he has retained an attorney in this matter.

Local attorney Mark Wolber, who is not associated with the case, explained that in any type of personal injury claim — including wrongful deaths — with multiple parties, there are likely to be third-party complaints.

“That’s not uncommon where there are multiple parties who might have been responsible for causing an injury,” Wolber said. “In this case, the hospital is saying, 'We’re bringing him in because he’s really the one at fault, not us.' The jury won’t be left with just saying the hospital didn’t do anything wrong. They can now say a wrong was committed, Bumbolo committed that wrong and the hospital didn’t.”

Wolber explained that if the case goes to trial with the more than a dozen defendants named in the suit, a jury will determine what parties — if any — are responsible for the wrongful death of the three victims, and apportion a percentage of responsibility to the named parties.

He said Bumbolo’s previous plea of not responsible by reason of mental defect would not be binding in the civil case.

“The standard of proof is different,” he said. “There are different parties involved. A ruling in one case can’t bind the party in a different case where they haven’t had an opportunity to participate in that case. The hospital, being sued, never had the opportunity to challenge his competency so they wouldn’t be bound by that decision.”

Follow @OD_Parker on Twitter or call her at 315-792-5063.

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